According the City of Morris Treasurer's Report, one of the city's largest vendors is a company called Minority Development Co. Last fiscal year, the city paid Minority Development $639,604.
With the name Minority Development, someone skimming the Treasurer's Report might assume that this is a minority-owned construction company hired for a large public works project. That is not the case.
Actually, this company occupies a sparsely furnished one-room office in the Franklin Building, where it does "paperwork" for a large suburban car dealership.
What is really going on here?
It appears that the arrangement goes something like this:
The car dealership claims that millions of dollars of vehicles are sold in the tiny office in Morris. Using a sales tax rebate agreement, the city then rebates a large portion of the city's sales tax revenue back to the dealership, keeping a small percentage for the city. Minority Development acts as the conduit. No cars, customers or salesmen are physically present in Morris.
The dealership manages to avoid paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales tax. The suburban village where the car dealership is actually located is similarly deprived of hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales tax revenue. All courtesy of the City of Morris.
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